


softlock

by Dark_Ennis



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Cybernetics, Depressing, Ethical Dilemmas, Ethics, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mindfuck, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Other, Sad, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Short, Short One Shot, Short Story, Terminal Illnesses, Tragic Romance, cybernetic enhancements, dark_ennis, philosophical, scifi, softlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21539923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Ennis/pseuds/Dark_Ennis
Summary: In a future where cybernetic neural enhancements are the norm, Tolya and his dying lover Kisho discuss a procedure that can decrease the significance of memories for those who have lost someone dear to them.
Relationships: OC/OC, Original Character/Original Character, Tolya (Original Character)/Kisho (Original Character), Tolya/Kisho
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	softlock

**Author's Note:**

> I hope y'all enjoy this! I actually wrote it for one of my Cognitive Science courses some months ago and rediscovered it today. It's rare I still like something I wrote months later so I figure that means it isn't too shabby.
> 
> For those of you poor, lost, (and quite frankly, justifiably frustrated) souls who are still waiting with any last scrap of hope for an update on my DBH fic "A Stranger in a Strange Land", I have some information on that fic's future (as well as an update of sorts on where I'm at as well) in the end notes below!! It may have been temporarily put aside for some months but it's not dead and abandoned completely, I promise!

Moonrays folded themselves between the dark layers of Night, their syrupy yellow glow bleeding into black and casting soft shadows against outstretched ferns and creaking redwoods. Distant stars and faraway planets twinkled down in friendly greeting and over the treetops of the slumbering valley below. The perennial glow of city lights could just be made out, waving back from towering skyscrapers against the crease of horizon. Tolya gently tapped his gloved palm as his eyes swept prudently over the clearing, shivering pleasantly as the signal from his glove gradually raised the temperature inside his thermo-electric sweatshirt. Locating a patch of grass protected from most of midnight’s dew near a boulder’s flattened face, Tolya padded over to it with silent purpose. He gave an appreciative pat to the impassive rock as he sat cross-legged in the shaggy grass, shoving his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie.

Tolya sighed and leaned back against the smooth granite, shutting his eyes for a moment as his Spktr recalibrated. At the gentle impulse behind his eyes, Tolya blinked lazily up at the skyscape. He usually enjoyed chasing the glimmering lines as they manifested in the gaps between clusters of stars, delighted in guessing at constellation names before his optical enhancements could draw them in faintly glowing cursive. 

“ Mars glows bright in Aeries (magnitude +1.4)!  ” faded cheerfully into his vision. “ Gemini may be particularly forgetful today. The end to your worries is in sight. Big change is on the horizon!  ” Tolya felt his hands close into fists as he read through his horoscope, sour mirth and a jittery uneasiness roiling in his stomach. A halting pupilar gesture and another recalibration dispelled the astrological data for his birth sign.  _ Nothing but guesswork and dumb luck _ , he instructed himself adamantly.  _ Even a broken clock is right twice a day. _ He withdrew his left hand and pushed his palm forcefully against the pressure building under his eyelids, only pulling back when the familiar bright red of Spktr’s “Unusual Pressure” warning blinded him. The adaptive polymer of his gloves wrinkled instead against the skin of his forehead as he dragged tense, twisted fingers through the sable curls that sat in perpetual disorder atop his head. He focused on the mindless action, slowly reigning in his darkest feelings.  _ Later _ , he reminded himself.  _ Don’t be so selfish. _ He slid his hand away from his scalp.

“The stars are beautiful tonight,” drifted airily from somewhere behind Tolya as the mild voice floated nearer to his makeshift bench quietly. “It’s so clear...like I could reach out and pluck one from the sky. How unusual.”

“You just spend too much time in the city, Kisho,” Tolya replied, returning his gaze to the sky and hoping he would be granted feigned ignorance for the roughness of his voice. “It’s not uncommon at all out here.”

Kisho hummed noncommittally, his lanky frame settling to Tolya’s right as he joined him. Tolya relaxed as smooth, dexterous fingers began to gently soothe the tufts of hair that had fallen victim to Tolya’s chaotic attack. Kisho leaned forward to rest his chin on Tolya’s shoulder.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Tolya asked finally, eyes drifting up to Octans as cold fingers replicated the lines of Libra’s scales along the back of his neck.

“You weren’t there to keep me warm,” came the muffled reply and Tolya didn’t need to look at Kisho to see the mischievous smile behind his words.

“The smart blankets adjust for our internal temperature data and the environment. I didn’t think you’d notice if I disconnected my interfeed,” he murmured, offering his hand palm up in reparation. Kisho accepted it, tangling their fingers together and resting their connected hands on Tolya’s thigh. “M’sorry,” he added after a moment.

“You’re thinking about it, right?” Kisho asked quietly as he squeezed Tolya’s hand in reassurance. “The procedure I told you about. You’re considering it.”

“No.”

Tolya’s shoulders tensed and his jaw tightened in stubborn determination. The dry heat of Kisho’s sigh tickling against the curvature of his ear did nothing to slow the creeping chill at the meaning of his words.

“Tolya,” Kisho pled, the tender sincerity lacing his voice adding to the unsettling knot of clenching dread lodged in Tolya’s abdomen. “I meant what I said. I want you to do it.”

“And  _ I _ meant it when I said I won’t do it!” he snapped, then flinched at the impetus of his own tone and softened his voice. The intensity of Kisho’s gaze on the side of his face felt like a physical force. “That’s just...it—it’s awful, ‘isho. Inhuman. How…” Tolya inhaled sharply, “How could you even ask me to do something like that?”

He couldn’t fend off the prickling of his eyes this time, it’s trembling pools warping his vision before they finally began to overflow. Tolya hated the drops of bitter wetness that cut trails down his cheeks, hated that their conspicuous spectacle revealed all the anger and fear and helplessness he kept hidden behind a mask of stoic optimism he never truly felt. But to burden Kisho with his own negativity when he was already dealing with so much had seemed unimaginably cruel. After, there would be a time to grieve: to sort through all the choler, resentment, and anguish weighing on his mind. Now, Kisho wanted to take even that from him. Wanted it to disappear when he did along with every other sign of the fundamental impression he had made in Tolya’s life.

“Making choices to minimize pain,” replied Kisho thoughtfully, cupping a hand around Tolya’s cheek and wiping away a tear with the tip of his thumb, “sounds very human to me.”

Tolya looked down, refusing to concede the point. He felt, irrationally, like if he met Kisho’s gaze the blazing radiance would consume him from the inside out.

“How could you ask me to erase you?” he finally managed to choke out. There was tired fondness in the exhalation of his name and then suddenly, Tolya was being wrapped up in slender arms. He curled into the warmth despite himself, ignoring the petulant desire to pull away. The soft whisper of a chaste kiss was pressed to his crown and Tolya wiped furiously at the returning dampness of his face.

“It wouldn’t be erasing me, Tollie,” Kisho whispered, raising a hand to tap gently against Tolya’s left temple. “Just making a few adjustments to your Amygdalic regulator chip. Re-assigning variable values, that’s all it is.”

“How can you say that so easily?” Tolya protested, bunkering further down into the embrace. “We’re not machines; we’re men.”

He pulled Tolya’s hand from his face and secured it between his own, tracing the creases of Tolya’s palm with a fingertip.

“Do you know the difference?” Kisho asked quietly, still playing with Tolya’s fingers. “Between men and machines?”

“Of course I do,” Tolya huffed. “Are you sure you do?”

“Machines manipulate variables, nothing more. Men assign those variables value. There are times where the value of certain variables must change, work in new contexts. This procedure just accelerates the healing process. Kind of like a cast.” ⁽¹⁾

“Right,” Tolya spat derisively. “Except a cast gets removed. My feelings won’t ever be returned.”

“You would still have your feelings.”

“Not for you!” Tolya bit out. “I wouldn’t get to keep my feelings  _ for you _ . And all our memories—all the moments we shared talking about the stupid dreams we had or comparing our favorite bad movies or debating about whether a birdie counts as a ball....planning out our future. None of it would matter to me anymore.  _ You  _ wouldn’t matter to me anymore. And I’d start forgetting things and the worst part is that I wouldn’t care about not caring.” ⁽²⁾ ⁽³⁾

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Kisho’s hand tightened rigidly around Tolya’s and when he shifted to look back at Kisho’s face in confusion, his eyes were distant, unseeing, and full of an unidentifiable swell of emotion. “Blind men do not see darkness. They simply do not see. It’s manual perceptive adjustment.”

“But I’ve already lived in the light. I’ll still know what I’m missing.”

Kisho hummed noncommittally, hand relaxing against Tolya’s. The silence stretched and the stars twinkled. It felt strangely familiar.

“They told me something funny when I went in for the consultation. Did I tell you, Tollie?”

Tolya shook his head and patted Kisho’s knuckles encouragingly.

“Hmm. Well, they told me that sometimes in these cases when a patient dies, their loved ones decide they don’t want the treatment after all. Maybe they’re scared about not caring, too. Maybe they think they’re doing something noble, that their love shouldn’t be repurposed. Maybe they just want to let themselves die, too...

“Why doesn’t really matter, anyway. It’s what happens after. All those emotions, they amplify the significance value of the memory. And in some cases, a memory’s level of significance becomes so high that the modification function in the Cybercampus starts to write over other memories, which in turn raises the relative significance even higher. They said in most cases nobody realizes what’s happening until it's too late. They get trapped in a catatonic state, unable to move forward, reliving the same memories over and over and over again for the rest of their lives and they don’t even know it’s happening. ‘Softlock Syndrome.’ Real life’s _Brain in a Vat_ ….Y’know, saying it aloud I guess that’s not actually very funny at all.” ⁽⁴⁾

Kisho’s copper eyes refocused and flickered to meet Tolya’s, filled with a terrified supplication begging Tolya to understand, strengthened by the undercurrent of fierce determination. Tolya kissed him softly, hand caressing Kisho’s cheek before pulling back slightly and tucking a lock of hair affectionately behind his ear.

“Would that really be so bad?” he wondered allowed, his smile bitter. “I could have this—have  _ you  _ forever. Just like we always planned.”

“But it wouldn’t be real,” Kisho pointed out, brow furrowed in consternation. “Just a cycle of experience, an error of infinite recursion caused by a bug in your cybernerual network. You’d never know the joy of raising a child...of growing old with someone content that you lead a good life...that isn’t living, Tolya. That’s laying down and waiting to die.”

“Waiting...no, it’s not waiting. It’s liberating the mind from time itself. What was it you said about blind men, ‘isho?” ⁽⁵⁾

Kisho tutted, his expression rebellious as he muttered, “There is difference between calculated adjustment and self-delusion and you know it.”

“I do want everything that comes with a good life but...those plans, they’re  _ our  _ plans, ‘isho. I don’t…” Tolya searched Kisho’s face, as if he could find the words to match his meaning hidden somewhere on his partner’s pearly skin. “I can’t do it without you. I can’t do it alone.”

“You could—I mean, I wouldn’t expect you to do it alone. I’d hoped that maybe, after the memories had faded a little, you might find someone else to do those things with. To be happy with. That’s all I want for you, Tollie. Just...please let yourself be happy.”

“You’re an asshole,” Tolya accused without any heat.

“Yes. And you’re impossible,” Kisho huffed, sending him a meaningful look. “Please, just promise you’ll try. Try to live a happy life, for the both of us?”

“I...I promise,” Tolya nodded, a strange ardor that Kisho missed sparking his eyes alight. “What if we started now?” he asked suddenly, “Let’s make the most of the rest of the night. And then, I promise I’ll live a happy life for us, Kisho. 

“You were right. The stars  _ are  _ beautiful tonight after all. It’s the perfect start to a new life...with one perfect, unforgettable memory.”

**Author's Note:**

> References:
> 
> 1: Searle, J. R. (n.d.). Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?  
> Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/11tmCmqrZu9spHjZ8igRWs6Zp1ESLWkV2/view
> 
> 2: Noë, A. (2004). Action in Perception: The Enactive Approach Perception.  
> Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Pu7YAkyIS0Pxh7BDUT0fL5tNtaLa83u/view
> 
> 3: Thompson, R., & Kim, J. (1996, November 26). Memory systems in the brain and localization of a memory.  
> Retrieved from https://www.pnas.org/content/93/24/13438
> 
> 4: INTELECOM. (2018, April 18). Brain in a Vat (Part 1).  
> Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuDH3aYWeU8
> 
> 5: Gefter, A. (2015, February 05). The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic - Issue 21: Information.  
> Retrieved from http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic


End file.
